


This Is Your Life, Ending One Minute At A Time

by gaialux



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Series, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1449928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/pseuds/gaialux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Fic contains mention of a 16y/o engaging in sex with an adult. Swearing because this is Debra Fucking Morgan we're reading about ;). Some <i>slight</i> liberties taken with conflicting canon information (book/show). Title quote from Fight Club.</p>
    </blockquote>





	This Is Your Life, Ending One Minute At A Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> Fic contains mention of a 16y/o engaging in sex with an adult. Swearing because this is Debra Fucking Morgan we're reading about ;). Some _slight_ liberties taken with conflicting canon information (book/show). Title quote from Fight Club.

Debra knows she's going to join the police force by her twelfth birthday. By the time of her mother's death. Cemented when she borrows a gun from her father's collection (much more vast than just handguns, a true collection if she ever saw one) and aims. Later, Dexter will come into her room, lean against the door, and stare at her until she asks "What the fuck, Dex?", and he will walk away with no change in composure.

Of course he tells her father all about it, but by that point Debra already knows what she's doing. She's faster than Dexter, more skilled with a firearm, and even if he is her father's favourite, she will still be the one to  _prove_ herself to him. She will be the cop. The detective.

She will be.

...

Death has a habit of following Debra around.

After her mother, it's her father. One death she tries not to dwell on because he overcame the illness. He was supposed to  _survive_. But when that social worker sits them down and starts talking, Debra zones out. She gets what happened. She just doesn't like to think about it.

To her, Harry will always be a detective. She will be just like him.

... 

When Debra is sixteen, she meets a guy.

After all the bad talking shit she hears directed to her from the first day of middle school to then (and beyond, it hasn't stopped yet), it feels like a bit of one-upmanship. Proof that she's not just the lanky, dumb girl with no social skills and the mouth of a sailor. "Boys don't like that," Marcia Louis tells her one day as Debra watches her slather on deep red lipstick in the stained school bathroom mirror. "They want someone sweet."

Sweet sixteen has never been a part of Debra's world.

The guy is named Chad and he hangs out by the school, puffing on cigarettes and giving cheesy smirks to all the girls who walk by. Debra cuts biology class and he comes up to her, flashes that grin, and asks if she wants a smoke. Of course she accepts. At this point, why not?

Chad lives three blocks away and Debra walks home with him a week later. It's a ratty apartment with pizza boxes and magazines strewn on all available surfaces. She likes it. Immediately she likes it because it's not perfect. Debra hates perfect.

They don't date of course, because Debra is still the  _lanky, dumb_ girl, but they do fuck, and people look at her differently.

She can't tell if it's better or worse.

...

The rest of high school goes like a blur.

Debra never learns to fit in and, after only a little while, she embraces being left out. Her weekends she spends at the shooting range, hitting targets faster, better, than people who have been doing the same for decades.

Eventually Dexter stops being so secretive and they go to the woods instead, aiming at trees mostly. The first time Dexter ever gets drunk is after one such trip, on wine coolers and cheap beer Debra had managed to steal.

"'m gonna be a cop," Debra tells him, eyes at the sky as stars shine down on them.

"Yeah?"

Even drunk Dexter doesn't have a loose tongue. Debra drops her gaze.

"Yeah," she confirms. "Detective. Like Dad."

Dexter nods and takes a sip of beer. He's only had about three. Probably not even drunk in the slightest. "You will be."

After that, Debra stops caring what others think. Her brother's got her back. It's enough.

...

"Officer Morgan."

Debra turns and almost collides with LaGuerta who has a scowl placed firmly on her face. Debra has an incredibly difficult time counting how often LaGuerta  _isn't_ wearing that facial expression.

"Yeah?" Debra asks, straightening her holster.

LaGuerta's scowl deepens. "Patrol on Baker Street."

Debra tries — hard — to not roll her eyes. "On my way to the car."

There's no further comment from LaGuerta, not so much as a look, and she's spinning on her heel and walking back the way she came.

 _Bitch_.

It takes Debra a long while, but toward the end she figures out that her and LaGuerta? Pretty fucking similar, actually.

...

Becoming a homicide detective is the best day of Debra's life.

It sucks that the sum total of attendance to this achievement is her brother and a few guys from vice, but Debra can't quit smiling.

She swears that Harry is standing behind Dexter the entire day.

...

Love is like the opposite of death. Being that it  _doesn't_ follow Debra anywhere. Sure, she gets boyfriends — she even manages to fall in love a couple of times — but they're all  _murderers_ or  _jerks_ or just generally  _incompatible_ with all she wants. Low standards don't give her shit now that she thinks about it.

But Debra keeps working. She keeps rising in the ranks. Even manages fucking _lieutenant_. Thing is, she can't help but feel that title is somehow betraying her father. Detective was always the dream. Now what had she gone and done? _  
_

...

Once upon a time she falls in love with Dexter. That just fucks shit up even more.

...

She sees her brother killing Travis Marshall, and Debra's whole world pauses. It's a bit of a cliché, now that she thinks about it — the whole 'frozen in time, slow motion' thing — but it is true. It's almost like a screen falls down. In front of it was the brother she adored more than anyone else in the world, and behind is the worst serial killer Miami has ever seen.

Of course she protects him. Debra always needed somebody.

...

The PI is the end of it. The end of being a detective (or a cop, honestly) in any real capacity. It's the end of being her father. It's the end of what she whispered to her mother in the last days of her life. It's the end of trying to hunt down her brother.

It's the end. She wished she knew just how  _literal_ that would be.

...

Before you die, your life flashes before your eyes.

Was Debra Morgan's worth it?


End file.
